A paper released today by the University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge has found that children and teenagers with Conduct Disorder have significant differences in their brain structures to those of healthy children.

Conduct Disorder is categorised as a group of behavioural problems where a child is aggressive, antisocial and defiant to a much greater degree than expected for a child of that age. Characteristics of conduct disorder include:

fighting and physical cruelty

destructiveness

lying and stealing

truancy and running away from home

The paper combines the results of two separate studies that used MRI scans to look at the brain structure of male adolescents and young adults who had been diagnosed with conduct disorder. The University of Cambridge study looked at 58 males between 16 and 21 years who had been diagnosed with Conduct Disorder in order to identify any noticeable differences in their neuro-anatomy.

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The males were split into two groups, those with childhood-onset conduct disorder, and those who developed it during adolescence.

They found that greater corticol thickness between the sample and healthy individuals, but even greater differences in the childhood-onset group.

Dr Luca Passamonti from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge commented on the study,

"There's evidence already of differences in the brains of individuals with serious behavioural problems, but this is often simplistic and only focused on regions such as the amygdala, which we know is important for emotional behavior. But conduct disorder is a complex behavioural disorder, so likewise we would expect the changes to be more complex in nature and to potentially involve other brain regions."

The second study, by the University of Southampton, looked at 37 males with Conduct Disorder and 32 healthy controls, all aged between 13 and 18 years old. They confirmed the findings of the previous study, adding more weight to the argument that teenagers with serious antisocial behaviour have significantly different brain structures. Talking about the findings, Dr Graeme Fairchild, Associate Professor in Abnormal Psychology at the University of Southampton, says,

"The differences that we see between healthy teenagers and those with both forms of conduct disorders show that most of the brain is involved, but particularly the frontal and temporal regions of the brain. This provides extremely compelling evidence that conduct disorder is a real psychiatric disorder and not, as some experts maintain, just an exaggerated form of teenage rebellion."

The study does not conclude any specific developmental stages that are responsible for this change in structure and cannot be used to identify individuals with behavioural problems. The focus for future research is said to be long-term studies in order to identify the possible risk factors that might influence brain development.

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